by Abigail Dean
I passed through the dark lobby and out into the City. The nights had become colder. The wind skimmed across empty pavements and between gaps in the grand, dark buildings. I walked along the walls of the Bank of England, past its pompous columns and the sculptures labouring above its doors. From his horse, Wellington presided over the late traffic. I walked past the old trade halls on Cheapside and through St Paul’s churchyard, beneath the glowing grey dome. I recalled the promise which the City had held when I had first arrived in it, as hopeful as I had ever been, discharged by Dr K and falling in love. It was hard to subdue the memory of the feeling, which wasn’t so different from the feeling itself. The place still held a few modest hopes. I hoped to complete this deal or that. I hoped to keep Devlin happy. I hoped that I made enough money so that I would never concern myself with paying for breakfast, or a pack of tampons. I passed Millennium Bridge and the cloistered quads around Temple. JP might still be at work, hunched in the dark of a labyrinthine chambers; there had once been an infestation of moths in his office, who had left holes in his gown and wig. At Aldwych I turned north, back towards lands of the living. As he did each evening, the doorman at the Romilly greeted me, and wished me goodnight.
I left London early on Thursday morning. There were still foxes sniffing the rubbish bags in Soho, and the sun wasn’t up. I drove straight through to Leicester and ate breakfast on the embankment at a service station, watching the traffic beginning to clot. A message from Bill to confirm my appointment the next day. A lorry driver stopped beside me to finish his coffee; he asked where I was headed. ‘I’d get a wriggle on,’ he said, ‘if I was you.’ I had seven hours before I needed to collect Evie from the airport and drive on to Hollowfield, but I intended to make another stop on my way. ‘Thanks,’ I said, and he waved. I returned to my porridge.
I waited for the traffic to clear, and continued on to Sheffield and into the Peak District. We had been scattered so far apart, when you thought of it: there was no reason to our whereabouts other than people’s willingness to take us. It had been one of the reasons that the proposed meetings between us had rarely taken place. The terms of Noah’s adoption meant that he would never be able to attend them; Evie was hesitant, and preferred our long phone conversations, or to visit me alone; Ethan had secured his place at university and lost interest in the reality of us: strange children, gathered in a room designed by a committee. The Coulson-Brownes had always brought Gabriel along – I expected that they were watching for some new nugget of horror to feed to the press – and Delilah had come reluctantly, chewing gum and distracted by a new gadget, right up until our final argument. I couldn’t recall a meeting after that one. Dr K had advised that it was for the best, and it wasn’t like I had missed them.
At Cragforth Cricket Club, I pulled onto the grass and pushed my sunglasses up my nose. As soon as I stood from the car I saw that an old man, all in white, was walking towards me. He held a stick in one hand and a bucket in the other, and for an impossible moment I believed that I had been caught; the whole town had been awaiting my eventual arrival and would guard Noah however they saw fit.
‘It’s a fifty-pence donation,’ said the old man, ‘for the car park.’
‘Oh. Sure – of course.’
The end of his walking stick had been carved into the shape of a cricket ball. It even had the seams, etched into the wood. ‘I like that,’ I said, and he chuckled. I produced a ten-pound note – it was an embarrassing amount more than he had requested, but all that I had – and dropped it into the bucket. ‘I don’t need change,’ I said.
‘You should save some for yourself. It’s two for one at the clubhouse bar, provided you buy before six.’
‘Thanks. That sounds good to me.’
He was already looking for the next car, but he waved over his shoulder, and I waved back.
I walked around the pavilion and to the pitch beyond it. The town was encircled by soft green hills, and I could see walkers on the nearest ridge, minute against the sky. There were a few benches in the shade of the buildings, just below the scoreboard, but the spectators were gathered at the edge of the field, in the sunshine. I stood a few metres from the little crowd and surveyed the scoring. JP had been devoted to the game, and I understood it well enough. When he had to work at the weekends, in the summer, the sound of Test Match Special filled our flat. The warm lull of it. Father had called cricket a game for faggots.
The Cragforth team was batting. Fifty-two for three. One of the batsmen had only just come in; he was batting timidly, leaving most of the balls. I looked back at the boys waiting in the stands, unsure what I was expecting to see. One of the men in the crowd wandered along the boundary to join me. He was wearing a Cragforth Cricket Club cap.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Not a bad start.’
‘No.’
‘Are you one of the mothers?’
‘No. I’m just stopping by.’
‘It’s a nice way to spend an afternoon.’
‘Yes.’
I was already sweating. I adjusted my sunglasses and shook the hair from my face. ‘I’m going to grab a drink,’ I said.
‘Oh, yes. There are some end-of-summer deals, I think.’
‘I’m driving. It’s a shame.’
The clubhouse was cool and dark. There was a moss green carpet and a whole wall of team photographs. The man from the car park sat at the bar with a new pint in his hand.
‘You didn’t take much persuading,’ he said.
I laughed. ‘Just a Diet Coke,’ I said. The girl behind the bar nodded.
‘It’s on the house,’ said the old man, and to the girl: ‘She blew her savings on the car park.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Did you travel far?’ the girl asked, waiting for the glass to fill.
‘From London.’
‘No wonder you look so bloody miserable,’ said the old man, and I grinned, and carried my drink back out to the sunshine. My friend in the cap still stood alone, and it seemed odd not to rejoin him. The timid batsman was out and conversing sternly with his father. ‘You haven’t missed much,’ my friend said.
‘Do you come every week?’
‘I try. My son used to play for this team, you see. It was a happy time.’
‘Oh.’
He smiled. ‘It’s a nice community,’ he said. ‘People look out for each other. You don’t get that everywhere.’
‘No. I guess not.’
A new batsman was on strike. He played an effortless drive to the boundary. I finished my drink and sucked the ice. This pair were more interesting to watch: they were reckless and aggressive, and they called inaudible instructions to one another across the central strip. I felt warm and lazy. I could spend the afternoon just here, I thought, and order a gin and tonic every few overs.
‘Do you follow the game?’ my friend asked.
‘A little. I had a boyfriend who liked it. That was a while ago, now, though.’
‘At least you got something out of it.’
‘True.’
A few balls later, the original batsman fumbled his shot, and the ball looped into a fielder’s hands. My friend winced, and was the first to break into applause. The batsman shrugged. Alone, he began the long walk back to the pavilion. Pressed cream uniform against the electric green grass. As he went, he removed his helmet.
I pushed up my glasses.
Noah Gracie.
He was a head taller than me. He had our pale hair, whitened from the sun. Alone on the pitch, he seemed very young, but when he neared the clubhouse I understood that he looked no younger than the other boys waiting to bat. It had been the fact that – when we were children – we had looked old. He met two women at the boundary, set up with folding chairs and a cool box in the shade of the building. I was too far away to hear what they said. One of them handed him a banana, and he jogged to join his team.
Noah Kirby.
The boys welcomed him into the thick of them. One handed him water. Another ruf
fled his hair. The man next to me was still clapping. ‘He’s had a good season,’ he said. I nodded, unable to speak, and joined the applause. I was watching the women at the boundary. One had opened a beer and a paper, but her partner was folding her chair, and gesturing towards the village. By the time she reached the car park, I was following her.
The Lifehouse had a short, inglorious existence. It closed its doors around the same time the new baby was born, so the house on Moor Woods Road suddenly felt a lot fuller. There was the baby, with his cot crammed into the corner of my parents’ bedroom, and his cries rebounding from floor to floor. There was Father, muttering between the rooms, with nobody left to preach to but us. There was Mother, appeasing them both; when we heard her hushing and cooing, we were never sure who was in her arms.
The Lifehouse had been populated, for the most part, by my siblings and me. In his efforts to convert the people of Hollowfield, I recognized that Father’s charm had faded. His old devotees – restless mothers, and bored girls hoping for an adventure in salvation – no longer glanced up when he passed by. His body was taut and restless, his veins closer to the skin. His sullenness, which had once been seductive, had become frightening: mothers shifted their children politely out of his path. He had a gut, and holes in his clothes. He didn’t look like somebody who could save you.
I had hoped the new baby might placate Father. A little reminder of his vitality. The truth is, our new brother was difficult and sickly. He was born a month early, and was jaundiced; at first, he had to stay in hospital, beneath artificial light. For two weeks, Mother was missing, and Father sulked at the kitchen table, criticizing our writing, our attitude, our posture. We ate little, and I was relieved when the child came home. Evie presented Mother with a card, with a drawing of Jesus, still and serene in the manger, and Mother parted the blankets so that we could see the baby’s face. He was raw and scrawny, writhing to escape her arms. Evie took back the card.
‘Maybe he’ll look like this when he’s older,’ she said.
I noticed that Mother tried to keep the baby from Father. She zipped him into a coat and took him for long walks on the moor, even though she was still stooped from the birth. During our lessons, they sat in the garden, bundled in blankets in the thin winter sunlight, the baby’s cries subdued by the kitchen door. One night, collecting glasses of water, I found them there past midnight, a hunched creature with two clouds of breath. It was March, and there was snow on the ground.
Father believed that there was something wrong with the baby. ‘The crying,’ he said. ‘What child cries like this?’ He constructed strange theories about the fortnight at the hospital. ‘Did you keep an eye on him?’ he asked Mother. ‘All of the time?’ And, when the crying was loudest: ‘Are you sure that he’s ours?’
First the books had gone, then the luxuries: colourful clothes; shampoo; our old birthday presents. Father sealed the windows with cardboard, so that the authorities wouldn’t be able to see in. It wasn’t that we were forbidden from going outside – not at first – but that we didn’t want to. I had three T-shirts on rotation, which smelt warm and rotten, and tracksuit pants with holes in the crotch. I contemplated meeting Cara and Annie on the high street. I directed whole scenes of my own humiliation: this time they would run from me, shrieking; this time they would feign politeness, and exchange a long, incredulous look, just before I turned away. Only Gabriel accompanied Father to the supermarket, and he returned snuffling or bruised. He had seen things that he wanted, and forgotten that he wasn’t supposed to ask for them.
The area beyond the house began to soften, then to blur. I could recall the direction of Moor Woods Road – the slope downwards, which started gently and steepened to the junction – but not the appearance of the houses, and not the details of Hollowfield. I dreamt of walking between the shops on the high street. They came to me in order: the bookshop; Bit by Bit; the charity shops; the Co-operative; the doctor. The shutters where the Lifehouse had been. I purchased paper bags full of food, taking my time, talking to the shopkeepers. Dreams ordinary enough to be true.
We were expected to learn together. Father taught us little that I didn’t already know, so instead I observed my siblings. Delilah sighed, perpetually and dramatically; sometimes she swooned face-first into her journal, exhausted. Gabriel held books a few inches from his face and stared at the words in frustration, imploring them to share their secrets. Evie was serious and studious, noting each word that Father imparted.
Once or twice a week, Ethan offered to take me off Father’s hands for a few hours. He did so begrudgingly, with feigned exasperation, and only when he had thought of something which he wanted to discuss. He had managed to retain more of his belongings than the rest of us, and in his room, he would settle himself on the bed, with his back against the wall, and open Mathematics for Economists, or The Canterbury Tales. ‘Come here,’ he would say, without looking up, and when I was seated next to him, he would begin to talk, in quick, concise sentences, waiting for the dot of my full stop before he started on the next.
I longed for the evening. After the tedium of our lessons, and our exercises, and Father’s dinnertime games. Evie and I had been left with three books: an atlas; an illustrated dictionary; and the myths beneath the mattress. When the house was still, Evie tiptoed across the detritus of our bedroom floor and lifted my duvet. First the cold of the room, then the warmth of her body, taking its place. ‘What tonight?’ I asked. It seemed important to ration the books, so that we didn’t become bored of them.
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Come on. Choose.’
‘But really. I like them all.’
I could sense her smile in the darkness. I thought that I could hear it. She switched on the bedside light.
Her favourite word was Car, which was accompanied by a photograph of a Mustang on an ocean road. My favourite word was Defenestration. Our favourite country was Greece, of course. We had found the routes of our heroes in the atlas, tracing them with our fingers, planning a journey of our own.
On the first warm day in spring, we sat in a half-moon in the garden, facing Father. That day, he was soft and charismatic. Mother was inside with the baby, and the afternoon was quiet. Father changed the syllabus, and we learnt about discipleship. ‘Obey your leaders and submit to them,’ Father said, ‘for they are keeping watch over your souls.’ He closed his eyes and turned his face up to the sun. ‘There are no Judases,’ he said, ‘at my table.’ It seemed obvious to me that Judas was the most interesting character in the Bible. I liked his sad attempt to return the silver paid for betrayal. Like that would do any good. Ethan and I had discussed the disparate accounts of his death, which we agreed was evidence enough that you couldn’t take the Bible as historical truth. If you were a real person, you only died once.
After our lessons, there was time left for play, and we spun across the garden in a game of tag, Father watching us from the kitchen door. I was It. I darted at Delilah and seized her shins, and we tumbled together into the soil where Mother’s vegetables were trying to grow. In the falling sunlight, I looked up from the ground and my siblings scattered away from me, bent-double, half laughing and half gasping, and I understood that if somebody were to come around the house and through the garden gate, they would see our beautiful family, us with our matching hair and our strange, antiquated clothes. There would be nothing to worry about at all.
And then there were other afternoons.
There was the afternoon when Gabriel smashed Father’s liquor. There was no longer any need for one of us to fetch the bottle: it stood in the middle of the kitchen table, like a condiment. Father had been drinking at lunch, and the bottle had moved to the edge of the table. It wasn’t that Gabriel gestured, or brushed it as he passed by; he set his palms on the table to stand up and placed one on top of the bottle. There was an odd second before we could see liquor or blood, when it seemed like the bottle might have survived, and in the next second, it shattered across the room.
Father was somewhere else in the house. Upstairs, the baby’s muffled screaming. We waited, none of us looking at Gabriel. Blood flashed down his wrist. He stood alone at the centre of our circle and started to cry.
‘Jesus, Gabe,’ Ethan said. ‘Stop it.’
Slowly, taking his time, Father came to the kitchen. There was no need to ask what had happened. He ran his finger across the damp tabletop, and sucked it. ‘Oh, Gabriel,’ he said. ‘Ever cumbersome.’
He touched his palm to the side of the little boy’s face, cradling it.
‘What will we do with you?’ he said, and the cradle tightened into a tap, gentle at first, as you would touch somebody whom you needed to wake, and then harder. A slap.
‘Do you know how much that costs?’ Father said, and his hand changed again: now it was a fist. I moved between Evie and the table, so that she wouldn’t have to watch.
‘No,’ Father said. ‘You know nothing of worth.’
‘Stop it,’ Delilah said, and Father laughed and mimicked her: Stop it, stop it, stop it. One for each impact. Delilah stepped from our circle. I hadn’t looked at her – really looked at her – for a while. She was so much thinner than I remembered. There were sinkholes around her eyes and beneath her cheekbones. She gripped Father’s hand with cadaver arms.
‘Don’t you understand?’ she was shouting. ‘He can’t see!’
She clutched Father’s fist as if it was a wild animal which she wanted to soothe. Their faces were a few centimetres apart. The kind of proximity where you can taste the other person’s mouth.
‘He can’t see,’ she said again.
Gabriel sat back in his chair. Blood had collected in his Cupid’s bow. He had stopped crying.
‘We can clear it up,’ Delilah said.
‘All of my children can see,’ Father said, and left the room.
And there was the afternoon when Peggy visited. The incident was omitted from her book, which surprised me more than it should have done. She wouldn’t have come out of it well. When I finished the book – Sister’s Act: A Tragedy Observed – under the supervision of Dr K, I flicked back through to make sure, with a kind of nauseous elation. I wouldn’t have come out of that afternoon well, either.